In a Berkeley City Council consent calendar item scheduled for Tuesday, March 15, they ask the “City Manager and Transportation staff to prioritize and expedite the installation of a bicycle lane on Fulton Street between Bancroft Way and Channing Way.”

The council item notes that the city needs to conduct a traffic study and public hearing before a new bike lane could be installed.

“This item urges staff to prioritize completion of all steps necessary to install the bike lane by May 12, 2016, Bike to Work Day or as expeditiously as possible thereafter,” according to the brief report. There is a bike lane on Fulton Street north of Bancroft Way but it ends at that intersection.

Bike East Bay wrote to the city manager in February to outline its rationale for the extended bike lane. On Feb. 23, the city’s transportation division chief Farid Javandel responded to describe other projects underway in Berkeley related to cycling infrastructure improvements, and note that other Berkeley intersections have historically had more crashes than Bancroft and Fulton.

South of Bancroft, cyclists and motorists must share the road. Image: Google Maps

“Part of what makes that section of Fulton so dangerous is that the bike lane ends,” she said, north of Bancroft. The shared parking and bike lane then become a right-hand turning lane. South of Bancroft, cyclists must share the road with motorists. “If you’re going through on a bike, you’re having to come out of the bike lane and merge into the lane where there are cars.”

The extension of the bike lane south of Bancroft would mean that cyclists would not have to merge back into the vehicle lane, though there could still be conflicts with vehicles turning right, she said.

Bike East Bay is calling for what’s known as a “protected” bike lane south of Bancroft, where the cycling lane is actually separated from vehicular traffic by planters, curbs or even parked cars. The city council item does not specify a protected lane, however.

Rivera disputed the city’s assertion that it must wait for the new CEQA rules to go into effect at the state level, and says the city could simply adopt those new rules now, which has been done elsewhere, she said. Under the new rules, the city could stripe the bike lane with less of a public process.

As far as the city’s assertion that it’s doing cycling-related projects in other places that may have seen more crashes, Rivera said she is glad to hear it. But she said the city needs to take a hard look at Bancroft and Fulton too. She recalled that, several years ago, a visiting Israeli professor was killed while biking through the area near where Schwarzman was struck.

“We really need to address all of these places where we have high collision rates,” she said. “We’ve seen a couple of really devastating collisions here. It does really need to be addressed.”

Rivera also noted that Berkeley has one of the highest rates in the state of collisions between vehicles and bicycles.

“It’s a great place to bike, and it needs to be a lot safer,” she said. “There haven’t been significant upgrades to the cycling infrastructure in Berkeley for a long time.”

Meg Schwarzman

Earlier this month, the neighborhood association representing the area where the Schwarzmans live released an update about her condition: “Meg is making a remarkable recovery from multi-site injuries that ranged from internal organ damage to multiple broken bones. Although she presently has stitches, wraps, a sling, and new bodily hardware, and must take constant medication to cope with the extraordinary level of pain, it is now clear that she will make it, with brain and mobility intact.”

In late February, “she moved to acute rehab for the long process of rebuilding her body, piece by piece. On the other side of this process, Meg’s one-year-old baby boy — whose first birthday passed in her absence from home — eagerly awaits his mom’s return. This is the most enormous motivator for Meg as she pushes through her difficult recovery.”

The notice continued: “We have enough data about the dangers of the intersection and stretch of road where this accident occurred. Let’s not make any more families go something through this. Please consider taking action by writing to Berkeley’s City Manager to call upon her to fast track the project to make Fulton Street safer.”

[Note: This story initially incorrectly identified the source of the latest update about Megan Schwarzman. It has been fixed.]

That’s the point, to make driving a car for short trips less convenient for shorter trips while making biking, walking and transit safer, more convenient and our streets more livable. The sad fact is that most people in Berkeley drive their cars just to go short distances only because our street designs make driving more convenient and biking outright dangerous. Imagine a Berkeley where 40% of the cars currently on the road are replaced with bicycles with a network of protected lanes that minimize conflicts; less pollution, less traffic, safer streets; this is completely in the realm of possibility. Other cities are doing it and everywhere it’s made a huge improvement in air pollution and quality of life. It’s immoral to acknowledge global warming is real yet refuse to to make changes to our lifestyle that can help mitigate it.

EBGuy

Thanks, you guys are are awesome.

Completely_Serious

Yeah, and if the CEO was running her company into the ground (over even below the ground into deep potholes) at a constant deficit, with employees waaaaay overpaid for the services provided, she’d be replaced immediately by the Board of Directors. Look how that is working!

testit

I’ve walked on these streets daily for years, and you certainly could walk a bicycle on Fulton where needed.

Plus, your argument works just as well the other way, that with so many cars it’s not practical to make special room for bicycles (this is your argument, not mine).

In the meantime, if it’s dangerous, don’t do it.

As to your comment about efficiency, if Berkeley prioritized efficiency there are a lot of changes that could be made, first and foremost, remove all the barriers that block through traffic that are ubiquitous in Berkeley. Clearly, efficiency is not the top priority. And that priority is to alter traffic to achieve other goals. The same could apply to bicycles, perhaps the shortest route, when it’s not the safest route should not be the first choice of those on a bicycle. Or a bicyclist could assert their right by taking a full lane, it’s up to each individual rider. I’m OK advocating for change also, just don’t expect that a strong desire will always result in change when there are competing interests.

BerkeleyCitizen

Try the “SeeClickFix” app for both Apple/Android. You can add photos. It feels satisfying to submit the issues this way, though in my experience, the City’s staff who monitor the issues submitted do not put any useful information or comments in their replies. The replies are just canned responses open and closing the issues. You have to go check for yourself to see if anything is actually done.

BerkeleyCitizen

Not sure why you bothered with your comment. Mine was meant to point out that football traffic shouldn’t be a consideration in the issue regarding this bike lane question on Fulton.

BerkeleyCitizen

I would upvote your comment 10x if I could! :-)

M_Farrel

“Now how about an effective way to report potholes and other similar
hazards DIRECTLY to the CoB in order to better expedite repairs?”
Try your phone.
And be courteous; attitude works against you.

M_Farrel

I frequently report potholes on my neighborhood streets to Public Works.
Almost always they are filled the next day.
Then I call them back and thank them.
You can hear the smiles.

Ziggy Tomcich

I have an equally preposterous idea; Close Shattuck, University, and Telegrah off to all vehicle traffic, and turn those spaces into parks, pedestrian and bicycle promenades, transit only lanes, and delivery driveways. This would make driving less convenient while making biking and transit more convenient. We can’t solve global warming by prioritizing our streets for cars while making the alternatives inconvenient and downright dangerous. Groningen in the Netherlands is about the size of Berkeley. The divided the city into four quadrants making it inconvenient to drive from one to the next, while making it faster and safer to get around by bicycle. It made the streets cleaner, safer, and improved the quality of life for everyone who lives there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjeTgX9AUGc

Ziggy Tomcich

Berkeley, home of the most dangerous streets in the bay area because they’re designed to prioritize cars over people. Maybe if it were made convenient and safe to ride a bicycle anywhere in Berkeley, people wouldn’t feel the need to get in their cars every time they wanted to go a couple miles. But Berkeley’s just a bunch of conservative global-warming deniers; at least that’s exactly how their streets appear. Berkeley city council in the 1970s voted to make biking a viable transportation alternative in a statement that read almost identical to one passed in Copenhagen the same year. The difference is that Copenhagen actually did something about it by making their streets safe to bike anywhere, and today has over 37% of their trips made on bicycle. Berkeley was all talk, but did absolutely nothing to make biking safe. Berkeley had 4.9% of all trips made by bicycle in 1990, but has since stopped counting.

David

Have you done any traffic counts around here? If you did, I bet you would find that more people bike this stretch of road than park. Why use the space to park cars when it could be better used moving bikes from point A to point B? It’s for the greater good, after all, right?

David

That’s pretty much the going rate. A City Manager is to the city as a CEO is to a corporation. When was the last time you heard of a CEO that gets paid a measly $265,000?

David

There is plenty of room in the nearby parking garages. And I never have trouble finding parking more than a couple blocks from downtown on any given night. If you don’t want to use a garage, the lot at Berkeley Way usually has plenty of room.

Now if you want free parking, well, that’s a different story. Too bad so sad, but it ain’t gonna happen downtown. Land is too valuable to offer free parking.

David

This is simply not true.

First, Rose Street has lower traffic volumes than Cedar Street, and Cedar Street has a stop sign at Milvia. And Cedar is also on a hill. And it works just fine.

Second, facilitating easy, safe access to a popular bicycle route will do far more to reduce pollution than eliminating a stop sign. In fact, with modern hybrid cars, stop signs actually improve fuel economy, which in turn reduces pollution.

Nice try though.

David

Very funny. With this logic, if you were to get in a car wreck at the 80/Gilman interchange, it would be your fault for using a facility that is “unsafe” for car drivers. Hate to break it to you, but city streets are open to bicycles just like they are cars, and the street in question even has bicycle lanes on it already–just not on the 2 blocks in question.

David

Not at all. This stretch of bicycle lane has been in city plans for years. The fact that it wasn’t done as part of last year’s repaving is utterly ridiculous. It’s just come down to city staff laziness resulting in a public groundswell for them to do what they’ve been telling us they would do for years. Sadly it took a widely publicized near-death experience for that to happen.

Jeffrey Baker

“Always full” seems a little hyperbolic. Last weekend I decided to visit the new BAMPFA and pulled into a parking space without any circling, smack in the middle of the day, not even 200 yards from the museum. Parking all over Berkeley is similarly plentiful. On the same day I went to Elmwood Cafe and parked _right_ in front of it without waiting.

emraguso

We have requested it from BPD. They have 10 days to respond.

Charles Siegel

Conservative traffic engineers still say one-way is safer, but most traffic engineers now say that two-way is safer.

dwss5

Bobby Lutzker wrote:
“You can report potholes and other similar hazards to Bike East Bay, and they are good about following up with the city: https://bikeeastbay.org/hazards_map ”

That’s great!

Now how about an effective way to report potholes and other similar hazards DIRECTLY to the CoB in order to better expedite repairs?
Maybe by also sending multiple copies of timestamped digital photos for each significant hazard to the above Bike East Bay link, to the appropriate CoB department, +AND+ to one or more media outlets (e.g., to BSide?) that can disseminate the info should the CoB sit on its behind$ for critical repairs?!

BerkPed

Testit, Your suggestion is not practical.

It might work if Berkeley had wide sidewalks, but many sidewalks in the campus area are narrow and overcrowded with pedestrians.

Furthermore, many streets around campus do not have sidewalks on both sides, such as Hearst.

During the day, you cannot really walk a bike on Bancroft, Durant, Telegraph, Oxford, Shattuck, Center st, University or Milvia without smashing into pedestrians.

The obvious (maybe unnecessary) response to your post: Sometimes you don’t know exactly how “dangerous” an area is until you’re riding in it and its too late…with two people already greviously injured (one dead) at the same place in a couple years it seems prudent to inconvenience drivers a little bit. Besides what if a cyclist misses your proposed sign and rides through anyway?

testit

If you feel you must ride your bike through an area that’s too dangerous, then get off and walk for a block or two. Sure, advocate for change in the mean time, but don’t take a risk just because you think the rules should be different. What would you have your 7 year old bike rider do in this area? You can do the same.
In this particular cast, removing parking spaces from an area with extremely limited spaces seems like a bad idea. I propose a sign that says, “walk your bike for the next two blocks”. Not much of a delay compared to the impact of trying to find new parking spaces every day for those displaced by the elimination of parking spaces.
We may all envision a better world with less driving, but imagining does not make it so. And a piecemeal plan, where who ever speaks loudest gets their way is no substitute for a fully thought out plan, with timelines and full funding.

testit

Seems like a wise idea to avoid riding a bicycle in places where it is dangerous to do so. I assume you wouldn’t ride on highway 80 even if you were allowed to. Sure, advocate for change but don’t ride in a dangerous place just because you think the rules should be different. It’s not a matter of being right, it’s about risk and safety. If you must go that way, walk your bike for a block until it’s safer.

BerkeleyCitizen

Football game traffic? Are you serious? The whole City is effected by football game traffic, all major streets are clogged as well as Southside neighborhood streets where football game attendees troll for free parking since Southside doesn’t have Saturday enforcement as the precious Elmwood does.

BerkeleyCitizen

How about pressuring the University to provide special parking passes at nearby UC lots for students with cars living that close to campus? Or in some way penalizing students who bring cars to Berkeley when they live only blocks away from the campus? This part of town is a public transit hub, everyone knows. This is a majority student neighborhood as City Council district maps clearly show. This should be Kriss Worthington’s job to deal with the problem, these folks are his constituents–his bread and butter. Kriss? Are you there? As a biker make a stand and put some effort in here.

BerkeleyCitizen

Yes, happened to me on a run once…I’ve since tried very hard to remember the absence of a 4 way stop at this intersection, but it makes no sense. Nor does the 3 way stop on Rose and Spruce with northbound Rose traffic not stopping make sense from a bicyclist or pedestrian perspective. Berkeley traffic planners must put the safety of pedestrians and cyclists first instead of allowing these arcane vehicle moving measures–no 4 ways at random intersections as above as well as on Fulton at Carlton and at least one other intersection on Fulton after Dwight–These 2 way stops serve to confuse drivers as I have observed countless times, east to west cars expecting south to north drivers to stop, and thus proceeding unsafely into the intersection as opposing vehicles familiar with the 2 way continue at normal speed through the intersection, often times resulting in close calls as well as pissed off drivers believing that the south to north drivers are to blame. Is this confusing? As I read this I can’t imagine most people not familiar with Berkeley’s wacky traffic engineering understanding a word of it.

BerkeleyCitizen

Perhaps there are traffic engineering solutions for a safe merge? Your suggestion seems to indicate that the bike lane would be on the east side of Fulton which does not match the description of the lane being a continuation of the existing Oxford St. lane (the street Fulton becomes) which is on the West side of the street. How would a west to east bike lane transition work when there is a lane of car traffic to pass? I’m not seeing it.

northberkeleyhills

As of last night, the CM makes $265,000 base salary. Add the benefits, well over 400K.

Erica Etelson

Thanks Bobby, will do!

Intoleratus

There are houses and apartments, no parking lot.

Anybody But Jesse

One where the INTERIM city manager can give away $3M of taxpayer money to union employees for no good reason, get support on the council, AND get made permanent CM by the same council.

Thorn A. Fusco

>>they think Rose traffic stops<< that would be the fault of those riders. it would be very hard to not notice there is not a 4 way stop there if you actually stop./ To put a stop on the hill like that- on top of the massive traffic problems it would cause on such a high use thru way, the extra power needed to accelerate away from the stop plus idling cars plus back ups through the light on MLK at rush hour = tons of pollution. Rose is also another FD route they intentionally have minimal stop signs

Thorn A. Fusco

the idea would be that the majority of bicyclists can turn left or right at Channing and then use that and other bike lanes- a bike lane is not about to go up Dwight, that’s a Fire Route as well as high traffic

Doug F

Um, no. The stats prove that 1-way streets are safer than 2-way. They also prove that riding a bike against the direction of traffic is insane.

I totally disagree. This has been a hazardous stretch for years. I have long wondered why such a congested and busy street has made no accommodations for bicycles. It appears that, as with many issues, a tragic accident was the motivation for change. If you think that setting aside room for bicycles is a knee jerk reaction, do you have a more considered suggestion? I avoid that area as much as is feasible when on a bicycle. Do you ride there?

testit

Once the proposed section of parking is removed, where will the people who now park their cars on the always full parking spaces park?

There is a dearth of parking spaces and if these spaces are taken away, more should be added nearby. Perhaps the sidewalk can be removed on one side of the street.

Charles Siegel

It was not pulled from the consent calendar, so it will pass unanimously.

But this should only be the first step. There are many intersections in downtown Berkeley and southside that are even more dangerous than Bancroft/Fulton, based on the record of crashes.

The city has adopted a series of Master Plans beginning in 1968 that all have said that there should be safe and convenient bicycle access to every part of Berkeley. But after a half century of feel-good policies, we still do not have safe bicycle access to downtown. The designated bike boulevard in downtown is Milvia St, where bicyclists are forced to ride unsafely in the “door zone.”

I think there could finally be some real improvements in the next few years, after fifty years of inaction and negligence.

BerkeleyCitizen

Why not all the way to Dwight? Doesn’t make sense–just moving a pinch point between Channing and Dwight. How will bikers safely merge while having to avoid parked cars while drivers speed up to pass the end of the bike lane on Channing to reclaim full possession of the road?

Dolly Fine

people often ride bikes on Fulton against traffic from Dwight to the University. It’s time to return all these streets on southside to two-way. The plan was to deliver traffic swiftly from downtown to the hills, from the hills to downtown and the freeways, but that design is outdated and dangerous.

Nancy Carleton

This stretch of Fulton has been an obvious gap in the bike-lane network for too long, this time with near-fatal results! For Meg, let’s get this fixed!